Icebergs in the desert

There are some plants I pay attention to along my daily commute route. (I tend to focus on natural things along the way, in denial of the many ugly human constructions.)

One in particular caught my eye this morning, not far from my home, a yucca in the median near a major intersection. It seemingly overnight has put out an arm-thick flowering stalk five feet tall. Besides the shocking suddenness of the growth, allowed by recent rains and typical of desert plants seizing opportunity, the remarkable thing about the yucca is the proportion of stalk to plant -- the plant itself is only up to my knees, whereas the stalk will soon be over my head and obviously masses more than the plant. It looks as though the first wind would topple it top-heavy out of the ground.

But the yucca persists through traffic and wind. So there must be much more plant beneath the ground level to anchor the mast of the stalk.

There are many desert plants like this. The bush morning glory is just a dry bundle of twigs through the winter, then in the spring a finger-thick stalk emerges to spread rapidly. But beneath the ground the root of the plant -- what must be considered the plant itself -- may be larger than a man. It stores away moisture in a tough fibrous mass, only raising what we think of as the plant above the surface when conditions are right. And, when conditions are poor, the plant may not emerge at all until the next season.

These are the icebergs of the desert, only the tip revealed of a much larger mass below. Each time I pass the yucca, I now ponder what other things I pass by that only show their tips, even what parts of people I never see because I see only the obvious.

What am I missing, down there under the surface, while I am distracted by what is above?